Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

On the Question of Dialectics

Written:1915Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1976,Volume 38, pp. 357-361Publisher:Progress PublishersFirst Published:1925 inBolshevik, No. 5-6Translated:Clemence DuttEdited:Stewart SmithOriginal Transcription & Markup:R. Cymbala&Marc SzewczykRe-Marked up & Proofread by:K. Goins(2007)Public Domain:Lenin Internet Archive (2003).You may freely copy, distribute, display and 
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The fragmentOn the Question of Dialecticsis contained in a notebook between the conspectus of Lassalle’s book
	  on Heraclitus and the conspectus of Aristotle’sMetaphysics.
	  Written in 1915 in Bern.Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that 
	  Lenin’s sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible 
	  where they were located in the original manuscript.

The splitting of a single whole and the cognition 
	  of its contradictory parts (see the quotation from Philo onHeraclitusat the beginning of Section III, “On Cognition,” inLasalle’sbook on Heraclitus[1]) 
	  is theessence(one of the “essentials,” 
	  one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) 
	  of dialectics. That is precisely howHegel, 
	  too, puts the matter (Aristotlein 
	  hisMetaphysicscontinuallygrappleswith
	  it andcombatsHeraclitus and Heraclitean ideas).

The correctness of this aspect of the content ofdialecticsmust be tested by the history of science. This aspect of dialectics
	  (e.g. inPlekhanov)
	  usually receives inadequate attention: the
	  identity of opposites is taken as the sum-total ofexamples[“for example, a 
	  seed,” “for example, primitive
	  communism.” The same is true ofEngels. But it is
	  “in the interests of popularisation...”]and not
	  as alaw of cognition(and as a law of the
	  objective world).

Theidentity of
	  opposites(it would be more correct, perhaps, to say their 
	  “unity,”—although
	  the difference between the terms identity and unity is not
      particularly important here. In a certain sense both are
      correct) is the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory,mutually exclusive,opposite tendencies 
	  inallphenomena
      and processes of nature (includingmind and society). The
      condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in 
	  their “self-movement,” in their
	  spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a
      unity of opposites. Development is the “struggle” of
      opposites. The two basic (or two possible? Or two historically
      observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are:
      development as decrease and increase, as repetition,anddevelopment as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity
      into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal
      relation).

In the first conception of motion,self- movement, itsdrivingforce, its source, its motive, remains 
	  in the shade (or this source is madeexternal—God, subject,
	  etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely
	  to knowledge of the source of“self”- movement.

The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is
      living. The secondalonefurnishes the key to
	  the “self-movement” of everything existing; it alone furnishes
	  the key to “leaps,” to the “break in continuity,”
	  to the “transformation into the opposite,” to the destruction 
	  of the old and the emergence of the new.

The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is
      conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of
      mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development
      and motion are absolute.

NB: The distinction betweensubjectivism(scepticism, sophistry,
      etc.) and dialectics, incidentally, is that in (objective)
      dialectics the difference between therelative and the absoluteis itself
      relative. For objective dialectics thereisan
      absolutewithinthe relative. For subjectivism and sophistry 
	  the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute.

In hisCapital, 
	  Marx first analyses the simplest, most
	  ordinary and fundamental, most common and everydayrelationof bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions
	  of times, viz., the exchange of commodities. In this very simple
	  phenomenon (in this “cell” ofbourgeois society) analysis
	  revealsallthe contradictions (orthe germs ofallcontradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition
	  shows us the development (bothgrowthandmovement) of
	  these contradictions and of this society in the Σ[2]of its
	  individual parts. From its beginning to its end.

Such must also be the method of exposition (i.e., study) of dialectics
      in general (for with Marx the dialectics of bourgeois society
      is only a particular case of dialectics).To begin with what is
      the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., withanyproposition:the leaves of a tree are green; John is a man: Fido is a dog,
      etc. Here already we havedialectics(as Hegel’s genius
      recognised): theindividualis theuniversal.
	  (cf. Aristoteles,Metaphisik,translation by Schegler, Bd. II, S. 40, 3.
	  Buch, 4. Kapitel, 8-9: “denn natürlich kann man nicht der Meinung sin, 
	  daß es ein Haus (a house in general) gebe außer den sichtbaren 
	  Häusern,” “ού γρ άν 
	  ΰείημεν είναί
	  τινα οίχίαν παρα
	  τχς τινάς 
	  οίχίας”).[3]Consequently, the opposites (the individual 
	  is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the 
	  connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the
      individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in
      one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment,
      or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal
      only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every
      individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc.
      Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with
      otherkindsof individuals (things, phenomena, processes) etc.Herealreadywe have the elements, the germs, the
      concepts ofnecessity,of objective connection in nature,
      etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon
      and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog,thisis a leaf of a tree, etc., wedisregarda
      number of attributes ascontingent; we separate the essence from
      the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other.

Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as in a “nucleus”
	  (“cell”) the germs ofallthe elements of dialectics,and thereby
	  show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general.
      And natural science shows us (and here again it must be
      demonstrated inanysimple instance) objective nature
      with the same qualities, the transformation of the individual
      into the universal, of the contingent into the necessary,
      transitions, modulations, and the reciprocal connection of
      opposites. Dialecticsisthe theory of knowledge of
      (Hegel and) Marxism. This is the “aspect” of the
      matter (it is not “an aspect” but theessenceof the matter) to which Plekhanov, not to speak of other
      Marxists, paid no attention.

Knowledge is represented in the form of a series of circles both
      by Hegel (seeLogic) 
	  and by the modern “epistemologist”
	  of natural science, the eclectic and foe of Hegelianism (which he did not
	  understand!), Paul Volkmann (see hisErkenntnistheorische Grundzüge,[4]S.)

“Circles” in philosophy:[isa chronology ofpersonsessential? No!]Ancient: fromDemocritustoPlatoand the dialecticsofHeraclitus.Renaissance:Descartesversus Gassendi (Spinoza?)Modern:Holbach—Hegel(viaBerkeley,Hume,Kant).Hegel—Feuerbach—Marx

Dialectics asliving, many-sided knowledge (with the number
      of sides eternally increasing), with an infinite number of shades
      of every approach and approximation to reality (with a philosophical
      system growing into a whole out of each shade)—here we have
      an immeasurably rich content as compared with “metaphysical”materialism, 
	  the fundamentalmisfortuneof which is its inability to
      apply dialectics to the Bildertheorie,[5]to the process and
      development of knowledge.

Philosophicalidealismisonlynonsense from the stand-point of crude, simple, metaphysical materialism. Fromthe standpoint ofdialecticalmaterialism, on the otherhand, philosophical idealism is aone-sided, exaggerated,überschwengliches (Dietzgen)[6]development (inflation,distension) of one of the features, aspects, facets of  knowl-edge, into an absolute,divorcedfrom matter, from nature,

apotheosised. Idealism is clerical obscurantism. True. Butphilosophical idealism is (“more 
	  correctly” and“in addition”) aroadto
	  clerical obscurantismthroughone of the shadesof the infinitely com-plexknowledge(dialectical) of man.

Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a 
	  straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of 
	  circles, a spiral.  Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be
      transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent,
      complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the
      wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical
      obscurantism (where it isanchoredby 
	  the class interests of the ruling classes).  Rectilinearity and one-sidedness,
      woodenness and petrification, subjectivism and subjective
      blindness—voilà the epistemological roots of idealism. And
      clerical obscurantism (= philosophical idealism), of course,
      hasepistemologicalroots, it is not groundless; it is asterile flowerundoubtedly, but a sterile flower that
      grows on the living tree of living, fertile, genuine, powerful,
      omnipotent, objective, absolute human knowledge.

[1]Seep. 348of this volume—Ed.

[2]summation—Ed.

[3]“for, of course, one cannot hold the opinion 
	  that there can be a house (in general) apart from visible houses.”—Ed.

[4]P. Volkmann,Erkenntnistheorische Grundzüge der 
	  Naturwissenschaften,Leipzig-Berlin, 1910, p. 35.—Ed.

[5]theory of reflection—Ed.

[6]The reference to the use byJosef Dietzgenof the term
	  “überschwenglich,” which means: exaggerated, excessive, infinite;
	  for example, in the bookKleinere philosophische Schriften (Minor Philosophical
	  Writings),Stuttgart, 1903, p. 204, Dietzgen uses this term as follows: 
	  “absolute and relative are not infinitely separated.”